A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
